


Redemption

by writerx75



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-09 16:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17410178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerx75/pseuds/writerx75
Summary: Can a world-destroying cannibal reform?  Can someone who's done something truly awful ever make up for it, and become better in the process?  Maybe when they've both saved the world already; after all, reaching to become someone better than you are now should be easier than that - shouldn't it?  And maybe while they're gearing up to save the world again, they'll have an opportunity to get closer...





	1. First Contact

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, Venom fans! I expected this to be mostly smut when I my ideas started, but we're going to have to get through some angsty times first, because both of these two seem fixed on exploring the idea of whether or not they can become better together. I'm rooting for them on Team Venom.
> 
> Please note that I have limited information about comic!Venom, and my story is likely to veer from the movie canon following the rocket crash into the bay, so you can consider this an AU, if you like. I will update the tags as the story continues and we get further into Explicit territory.

The first time it happened, Eddie figured he must just be fooling himself. He’d gotten home from the hospital two days before. Dan had checked him over, and he’d told himself it was just seawater in his eyes when the doctor had said that aside from incipient hypothermia (from treading water and screaming out for Venom until not long before Anne showed up on the shoreline calling for him) and maybe a cracked rib from hitting the water, he was more or less fine. The doctor had bundled him up in a warm blanket and Anne had kept giving him those looks out of the corner of her eye as she drove him home, the ones that said she knew he wasn’t all right, but thought it wasn’t her place to insist anything anymore. She and Dan had offered their couch for a few days, to give him enough time to get his head together, but just the thought of being a pitied visitor in the apartment he’d shared with his fiancée in another lifetime had been more than he could deal with.

He’d arrived to find his front door closed but not locked and had expected upon going into his apartment that anything useful would be gone, but instead he’d been greeted by the destruction that he and Venom had caused when they fought Drake’s men. Something in him clenched as he thought of the two of them together, like he’d gotten punched in the stomach again.

Having something to do had always been a way for Eddie to keep focused and moving despite anything, so he’d fished around under his sink until he found a box of big trash bags and a pristine-looking dustpan and brush he couldn’t remember buying and began sweeping up broken glass, tater tot crumbs, and shards of his belongings.

He’d taken out five stuffed bags that day, along with various misshapen broken things, working until he’d dropped from exhaustion onto his newly clean sofa into a dreamless sleep. When he woke up the next day, his back complaining about the lumpy cushions, he continued cleaning up and fixing what he could until his place looked even more pristine than the day he’d moved in.

After he made the third circle of his apartment, glaring at everything as if it was going to attack him, Eddie knew he had to at least go for a walk because he couldn’t stand being there anymore. He thought about going to Mrs. Chen’s for some food, since he’d had to throw out everything in his refrigerator and freezer, but instead somehow ended up down by the bay.

Police tape remained over part of the scene, and pieces of exploded rocket still lay washed up on the shore, but Eddie felt a dull sort of surprise that no one else was there, given the magnitude of what had happened. The empty ache in his chest got so bad at times he realized he was walking hunched over, but he guessed that the day of the rocket crash had just been a normal day for everyone else. He wandered along the shore for a couple of hours, until the sun began to set, but everything he found that looked like an oil slick actually was one. His stomach tied itself into knots during the walk back, but by the time he got back home, Eddie felt so exhausted that he fell onto his bed after just kicking his shoes off, and blackness overcame him.

_The sensation of falling hit him first, but that yawning feeling of impending doom got swallowed up by his desperation to hold onto the little threads of Venom still attached to him as fire continued to bloom above them, pressing down and destroying the little parachute/shield Venom had become._

**Goodbye, Eddie**

_“No!” He held on so hard that he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms, held on until his hands shook and his knuckles cracked, until the shock of freezing water hit him._

He sat bolt upright, then gasping and looking around, and it took a moment before he could realize that the half-darkness around him was his room. In that median in-between time, something happened that he couldn’t be sure of.

**..ere…ddie…**

“Venom?” he shouted, just before he remembered his actual location, then swore under his breath about the noise before mentally shouting Venom’s name and searching for any sign of movement in his body in response. After a few minutes of waiting and trying to get his breath, Eddie’s stomach growled with a fierceness that surprised him, and he started thinking of how long it had been since he ate. He shook his head and looked at the clock, surprised that it wasn’t even 9PM yet, put his shoes back on, and headed for Mrs. Chen’s. He surprised himself by getting some ingredients to make a couple simple dishes he knew by heart, and tried not to think about how half the basket was filled with tater tots and chocolate, just in case. Eddie clenched his empty hand into a fist as he waited behind a guy buying a carton of smokes, wanting to curse the hope in his heart but unable to let it go.


	2. Second Time Around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breathe with me and we'll get through this, I promise!

The second time it happened was the next night, after a long day of more rejections on the phone, and wondering how much longer he could stretch out his savings. When Eddie decided he couldn’t take it a minute longer, he dug up his gear and ran out to the bay to stare at the water again, and once he caught his breath, ran home. It had been so many years since he’d had a running habit, since college, really, that he fell asleep right away.

_A bright burst of pain as sharp teeth shredded and cut the largest piece of them away. Rough laughter and the scent of death, barely missing a stomped hoof as the minuscule shape they now had squidged for safety underneath a rock. Lying in wait there so long, feeling life drain away and hoping something small would happen by that they could surprise… ___

__Eddie woke in a haze of confusion. He could still feel everything from the dream, but he couldn’t make much sense of the events because some of the sensory information he was used to was missing, replaced with some he couldn’t interpret at all. The only thing that lingered after a few seconds was a faint sense of terror, like the sound of a voice that was so far away you couldn’t tell if it was just screaming or saying words._ _

__Then his stomach dropped as he put a few of those things together and Eddie bit his lip hard as he mentally screamed for Venom, patting his chest as he tried to pick up on any sign of movement. Eddie cursed as even that terrified feeling seemed to flicker out after a few seconds. Wide awake by then, he marched to the kitchen, grabbed half of the chocolate he’d bought, and sat on the floor in the dark eating it, ignoring his jaw working while he studied the rest of his body, hoping to feel some kind of movement that he hadn’t made, or get the sensation of an emotion that wasn’t his. Afterwards he lay in the quiet dark of the early hours of the morning, breathing with as much calm as he could muster as he searched his body for movement until sleep took him again._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are most appreciated!


	3. Third Time's the Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, something concrete! I hope you like how it plays out.

The next day, Eddie woke late, feeling the broken-up sleep in the sand under his eyelids and the fogginess in his brain, but he suited up for a run anyway, before he could get conscious enough to talk himself out of it. He knew he couldn’t go as far as he had the day before, since his muscles were already complaining, so he kept to his neighborhood and ran on autopilot. Eddie couldn’t stop hoping that the dream that hadn’t seemed to be his meant something more than a random creation from his subconscious, and then couldn’t stop feeling like a fool for hoping.

Despite the whirlwind of his thoughts, Eddie felt energized and not sore enough to limp after getting home from his run, and he even remembered to check his mail for the first time in several days. He put down the fistful of envelopes and a few catalogs as he got into his apartment, sorting it to toss the junk and keep anything relevant. Most of the remaining pile looked to be bills, but one envelope with an unfamiliar return address caught his eye. Opening it, Eddie had to stop himself from cheering as he saw the check, remembering the weeks of freelance work he’d done for a small news website under a pseudonym, until they’d figured out who he was and canned him.

“Fuck yeah, they actually paid!” Eddie said with a grin, then shook his head. “See if the check bounces when I get to the bank.”

He was still grinning an hour after he’d cashed it, having deposited most in anticipation of everyone who wanted a piece, but kept a few dollars to splurge. Eddie hesitated at the baskets near the entrance of the grocery store, but ended up getting a small cart instead, reasoning that he wasn’t far from his apartment and could carry home a few more things. He’d picked up a few items in the produce section and had been heading to get some pasta when he found himself slowing down at a display on the endcap of one of the aisles that showed off a mountain of chocolate. Reaching out, he paused as he thought better of it, mentally coaching himself to eat healthier, and had turned to move on when something happened that made him freeze.

Eddie had never considered himself a music aficionado. He had bands he liked to listen to, sure, but he wasn’t that good at identifying older songs like the ones that had been playing since he got to the store, and he’d pretty much tuned them out. For some reason, though, everything seemed to still around him for a moment, and the music from the tinny speakers overhead became all he could hear.

"I sit looking 'round  
I look at my face in the mirror  
I know I'm worth nothing without you  
In life one and one don't make two  
One and one make one..."

Time seemed to pick back up a beat later as a family shopping walked by him, the song continued on, and a stocker packed cans onto a nearby shelf, but Eddie didn’t notice any of it. He didn’t remember abandoning his cart or walking home or even opening the door. The dam broke in the middle of his living room as he fell onto the clean but stained carpet in front of his couch, meaning to sit on the furniture but not quite making it. Eddie crossed his arms in front of his chest as the tears started, curling in on himself as the loneliness and pain of missing Venom hit him like a blow. That turned into full-blown sobs after a minute, and Eddie closed his eyes as it went on and on. He wondered how big a fuck-up he must be that he couldn’t even do something simple like hold on.

 _“You always were a worthless piece of shit, boy. You could never do anything right,”_ the old voice in his head butted in after a while.

Eddie opened his eyes at that, staring at the couch and wondering how long he’d been curled up on the floor. “Shut the fuck up, you hateful old bastard. What the fuck do you know about doing anything right? You destroyed our whole fucking family, and I’m the fuck up?”

He sighed then and started straightening his back out, but jerked into a sitting position as he looked down at his clenched hands. Both sets of knuckles had a thin strip of black covering them, and Eddie felt his heart drop and then race at the sight. He grabbed one hand with the other, cradling one black strip and bringing the other to his lips.

“Venom, thank god,” he whispered, and watched the stain on his knuckles as it stayed for another few seconds before fading back into his skin.

Standing up, Eddie winced as his muscles complained after stretching back out from the whole-body clench he’d done in his misery. Suddenly, everything seemed so clear, clearer than it had been in months. Venom had given everything to try to protect Earth, so he was going to do whatever he could to help him get better.

“First things first,” he muttered to himself, scrubbing a hand across his eyes as he headed to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water. “Get some more food in the house. Then I’ll figure out what the fuck to do next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics quoted are by The Who, from their excellent song Bargain. I have to say, I had the idea for this story rattling around in my head for a while, but that snatch of lyrics is one of the reasons I actually decided to write it all down. I hope you like this installment; please let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are heartily appreciated, and Comments are love! Thank you for reading!


End file.
